Rosh Hashanah: Have a Sweet and Joyous New Year

Geller Report wishes for a year filled with happiness and joy in this the new Jewish new year 5784. May the teachings of our rich heritage guide our paths, and the light of the Torah and Israel illuminate our souls.

For non-Jewish readers, Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the universe, the day G-d created Adam and Eve, and it’s celebrated as the head of the Jewish year. It is our new year.

 Netanyahu’s Rosh Hashana Message for 5784

Rosh Hashanah
Everything you ever wanted to know about the holiday

The Editors, Tablet Magazine
Abigail Miller/Tablet Magazine

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Since the holiday is commonly called the “Jewish New Year,” one would think Rosh Hashanah would mark the first day of the first month of the Hebrew calendar. It doesn’t: Tishrei, on the first day of which we celebrate this major holiday, is the calendar’s seventh month. Why, then, is it given the distinction of marking the new year?

This question is especially vexing considering that—like the old adage about two Jews and twice as many opinions—the Hebrew calendar marks several different occasions as New Year’s Day: For example, the first day of Nissan, the first month, is the yardstick according to which we measure the years of the reign of kings, while if we were concerned with the tithing of animals, the date to keep in mind would have been the first of Elul, the sixth month.

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Seven, however, had always had special meaning in Judaism; although Rosh Hashanah itself isn’t mentioned by name in the Bible, God, speaking to Moses in Leviticus 23:24, imagines the holiday as a sort of Sabbath for the soul: “On the first day of the seventh month,” says the Almighty, “you are to have a day of rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts.”

These blasts come courtesy of the shofar, or ram’s horn, which is blown to awaken the congregation from its spiritual slumber and drive worshippers to repent. In the Mishna, the holiday is also referred to as “the day of judgment.” The world, the rabbis tell us, is assessed four times a year: on Passover, God passes judgment on the earth’s fertility for the coming year; on Shavuot, he judges the fruit of the trees, and on Sukkot, the rain. But on Rosh Hashanah, it’s man’s turn to stand trial.

Judaism being a legalistic religion, the procedure is described in detail. The Talmud, in the tractate on Rosh Hashanah, tells us that on that day God opens three celestial accounting books: in one He writes the names of the righteous, who will go on to live another year; and in the second, the names of the wicked, who shall perish from this earth before the year is over. The third, and most heavily populated, contains the names of those indeterminate souls whose fate hangs in the balance. They are then put on the heavenly waiting list, and have until Yom Kippur—the 10-day period known as Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) or Asseret Yamei Teshuva (Ten Days of Repentance)—to repent for their past sins. And as we can never know for sure just which book has our name in it, goes the logic, best to join the atoners. The books, tradition has it, are sealed on Yom Kippur, which is why a common greeting in the period between the two holidays is le’shana tova tikatevu ve’tikhatemu—may your name be written and sealed for a good year.

Casting away sin, however, is serious business, so the custom of tashlikh was created, most likely in 13th-century Germany. The practice derives from the Book of Micah, which commands us in the penultimate verse of its last chapter, to cast all our sins “into the depths of the sea.” On the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jews congregate by bodies of flowing water—usually rivers, seas, or, when necessary, faucets—toss in bits of bread and recite portions of Micah, and thereafter emerge cleansed and ready to repent.